Deborah Willis's essay “The Black Civil War Soldier: Conflict and Citizenship” raises important questions about the experience of African American troops during the Civil War, a period of monumental upheaval which – albeit temporarily – enabled disenfranchised and disadvantaged groups to expose the inequalities which undermined the myth of American liberty, and to play a role in reinventing the lines and values by which the reborn nation was to be defined. By focussing on the photographic medium – which exploded in popularity in tandem with the Civil War, and which was widely praised as both inherently democratizing and truthful – Willis explores the bravery, independence and politicization exerted by black soldiers in their attempts at self-representation. In this short response I discuss, first, the problems and paradoxes faced by black soldiers in staking a claim to citizenship and its attendant benefits, and, second, the importance of considering photographs as material artefacts.

The concept of citizenship – one of Willis's key themes in this piece – was hotly contested in the antebellum period.Footnote ¹ Black men were fighting not only for emancipation, but for what came after – the inclusion of black men (at least) in the idea and running of the nation. But what constituted a citizen? What sort of person should a citizen of the United States be? These were not only legal and judicial questions, but cultural ones too.Footnote ² The seismic changes of the antebellum period – immigration, urbanization, quasi-industrialization, westward expansion and the rise of mass suffrage, not to mention the deepening national rift over the slavery issue – all fuelled anxiety and debate about who should be allowed to participate, not only in the solemnity of republican democracy, but also in the civic life of the nation more broadly. White middle-class northern reformers were particularly vocal on the subject: good citizenship required virtue, respectability and character (watchwords which, translated, usually equated to ideas such as sobriety, sexual purity, industry, honesty and evangelical piety). The continued legal and social discrimination levelled against African Americans, whether enslaved or free, demonstrated that citizenship remained a racialized and gendered concept. Willis's essay helps us to understand the processes by which individual black men (and women), taking advantage of the tumult of war, sought with varying degrees of success to dismantle and reinvent this contested concept in their favour.

By negotiating the experience of military service, African American men challenged prevailing notions of black manhood, and troubled existing models and expressions of citizenship – the most inflammatory of which, the 1857 Dred Scott decision, had explicitly excluded black people. The upheaval precipitated by the Civil War, and the decision of the federal army, after much stalling and hesitation, to enlist African Americans in combat roles, flew in the face of Dred Scott, and undermined notions of citizenship that had been built, implicitly or otherwise, on an almost universally held assumption of white supremacy. As J. Matthew Gallman puts it, “by arming black men, the Union was acknowledging something about black humanity and specifically about the manhood of these new soldiers.”Footnote ³

However, this tacit admission of the humanity of African American troops, and their right to fight and die for the nation, did not automatically translate to acquisition of citizenship rights. Calls to arms aimed at black enlistees focussed on the chance and the duty to prove oneself and to demonstrate one's manhood. Yet the standard against which this manhood was measured was constructed and policed by a society which privileged white cultural values.Footnote ⁴ If black men were to win freedom – and, further, citizenship – then they would have to prove that they fit within white models of manhood. To become citizens, they would have not only to dismantle existing – and deeply rooted – negative ideas about black men, but also to demonstrate their ability to perform white values and ideals.Footnote ⁵ White soldiers had to prove they were brave, patriotic, virtuous and moral; African American soldiers had to prove the same, while simultaneously proving they were not barbarous, ignorant, dependent and weak.Footnote ⁶ This was a process with more at stake for black soldiers – not only the reputation of individual soldiers, but the reputation and future of an entire racial group. It was also a process fraught with paradoxes.

One paradox concerned the family. The family, and the ideal of domesticity which shaped the institution, was key to the concept of citizenship. Good male citizens were good patriarchs. Stern but loving disciplinarians, reliable breadwinners, companionate husbands, they protected their innately vulnerable wives from the temptations and dangers of the public sphere, and provided an example of restraint and independence to their sons. Meanwhile, wives and mothers created an oasis of moral purity within the domestic space, and provided an antidote to the materialism and competition of business by raising pious, civic-minded children and supporting husbands chastely and decorously. In short, the domestic ideal was seen as crucial to the production of good citizens – and this domestic ideal was overwhelmingly constructed as white and patriarchal. One of the challenges for African Americans staking a claim to citizenship was to demonstrate their ability to fulfil this domestic ideal. This was no simple task.

The abolitionist movement focused much of its moral suasion literature on the ways in which the peculiar institution degraded and destroyed the family, and thus affronted God. Marriages were not legitimate, thus forcing cohabiting couples to commit the sin of fornication. Sexual exploitation was rife, flouting the black patriarch's duty to protect his wife and daughters. The family, many abolitionists stressed, could be broken up without a moment's notice at the whim of the cruel slaveholder, who held the threat of sale “down the river” over the heads of those s/he owned. While scholars have long debated whether the enslaved family was a form of resistance which helped people cope with the realities of enslavement, or a paternalistic trap created by slave-owners and southern preachers to dissuade flight and insurrection and to keep enslaved people docile and (re)productive, it is clear that enslaved families were subject to frequent and arbitrary interference from slave-owners.

Freedom, meanwhile, seemed to come with the promise that white interference in family life would cease, and that fathers would be able to fulfil their responsibilities as breadwinners and protectors. As James O. Horton writes, “for black men the ability to support and protect their women became synonymous with manhood and manhood became synonymous with freedom.”Footnote ⁷ The dilemma here, as Willis points out, is that securing that freedom often came at the price of abandoning the family. This was painfully true for men who fled slavery to join the Union ranks and fight for emancipation, frequently leaving vulnerable family members behind – as did John Boston, who left his wife Elizabeth still in bondage to join a New York regiment. As Willis suggests, Boston's actions reveal “the difficult choices enslaved men had to make as self-emancipators – to leave their families to perhaps years of enslavement and brutal torture.” Achieving freedom and citizenship, then, required men to compromise some of the roles which freedom and citizenship should have guaranteed: father, husband, protector, breadwinner (not least because the struggle for pay equity was a lengthy one for black Union troops). Photography could help to mitigate this compromise: Willis includes a touching family portrait in her set of photographs, and, as I discuss below, the object of the photograph could even stand in as a patriarchal proxy.

Another problem concerned the reconciliation of brutality and civility.Footnote ⁸ Good citizens, according to northern white middle-class norms, were rational, and capable of intelligently and calmly making the informed decisions which accompanied the right to vote, to sit on juries or to hold elected office. They were not hot-headed and overly emotional like the rebel ruffians of the South, nor were they blithely violent and raucous like the immigrant drunkards clogging the nation's ports, and the unruly mobs importing their dangerous ideas of universal suffrage from the West. Here lay another paradox for black troops fighting for the right to be recognized as citizens: exercising citizenship required restraint and self-control, but securing that citizenship required bloodshed and violence in the form of armed military conflict. Earning the respect of white officers and politicians (and their endorsement of black claims to citizenship) required the performance of characteristics such as honour, courage and a willingness to martyr oneself for the cause. This was especially so for black soldiers, who faced cruel treatment, summary execution, or (re-)enslavement if captured, and for whom the outcome of the war held such monumental and immediate significance that nothing short of full-hearted commitment to the fight would do.Footnote ⁹ This commitment required not only stellar discipline, precision of aim, tactical awareness and boundless stamina, but also the ability to fire a bullet at another man's head, to thrust a bayonet into his gut – to maim and to kill in the name of freedom and the United States. There was no room for civility and politeness on the battlefield.

This was particularly difficult given that racist stereotypes about black men in the antebellum period frequently focussed on their perceived savagery, barbarity and subhumanity. Black soldiers had thus to embrace violence, but not savagery, to channel the rage of centuries of injustice, persecution and enslavement into a controlled, but deadly, physical force.Footnote ¹⁰ They had to be brutal, but not too much, lest they prove the doubters – those who claimed African Americans were akin to animals – right. The images chosen by Willis demonstrate the nature of this compromise. In many of the photographs, black soldiers pose with weapons – rifles, pistols, swords etc. Despite the presence of these deadly instruments, however – shortly to be deployed in the killing of the enemy, is the implication – their full lethality is diluted by the positions in which they are held. Loosely, almost casually held, or else used as a support against which to lean, these weapons are not being brandished. They are not on the verge of being utilized. The men who hold them clearly understand their purpose, and are capable of using the weapons, but their viciousness is harnessed and checked. They are not overtly menacing; nor are the men bearing them.

If African American soldiers could not afford to be too savage, however, neither could they afford to be too passive. The compromise between violence and restraint was complicated yet further for black troops by the issue of obedience. Military service required discipline and an ability to obey orders and display appropriate deference to the military hierarchy. Here, African American troops encountered another paradox. How were they to be good, obedient soldiers, without implicitly proving another negative, racist stereotype: that of innate black docility? The attitudes of even the most well-meaning white officers towards their black troops demonstrated just how ingrained this stereotype was. For instance, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a militant Massachusetts abolitionist, praised the obedience of his regiment, writing in his diary, “To learn the drill, one does not want a set of college professors; one wants a squad of eager, active, pliant school-boys; and the more childlike these pupils are, the better.”Footnote ¹¹

As Willis discusses, another white officer, Lieutenant T. F. Wright, jotted down brief remarks on the backs of photographs of his men, commenting on the character, intellectual capacity, demeanour and physical appearance of the men portrayed. These comments reveal the paradox that black soldiers faced: by collecting these images, and setting down his own recollections and impressions of these men, Wright demonstrated his appreciation for his regiment as individuals and as human beings. However, there can be no escaping the uncomfortable echoes in Wright's comments of earlier slave advertisements – both those promoting enslaved people for sale (and praising, as Wright does, characteristics like promptness and obedience) and those seeking recapture of fugitives (which deplored slaves which were “hard to manage … stubborn and reckless,” as Wright describes one soldier in his regiment). Nevertheless, photographs of black soldiers affirmed the determination of black men to fight for their freedom, and to take it by force, rather than to wait for it to be handed to them by white authorities. These images of black militancy were a powerful statement of both individual and collective intent, and a rejection of the “older abolitionist image of the prostrate slave with outstretched hands asking for their emancipation.”Footnote ¹²

The photographs and letters discussed by Willis in her essay reveal the ways in which black men and women, whether born free or recently emancipated, grappled with the prejudices and inequalities that plagued their (individual and collective) quest for freedom and citizenship. Black soldiers took advantage of the democratizing medium of photography to refute pervasive and popular racist stereotypes and to represent themselves as ideal citizens. The choices the subjects of the photographs made – in pose, in facial expression, in props, and in the very act of going to the photographer's studio – were important expressions of freedom, individuality and humanity, and created a powerful visual statement of the claim to citizenship.

My second point concerns the material properties of these photographs. They must not be viewed merely as images, but also as objects: produced, developed, sold, sent, held, treasured, discarded, reused, archived, rediscovered, exhibited.Footnote ¹³ Historians such as Reid Mitchell and Patricia Richard have explored the importance of correspondence between the home and battle fronts, which was copious and largely uncensored, to the maintenance of the morale and dedication both of young men struggling to cope with traumatic and alien experiences far from home, and of womenfolk left to run households and raise children amid financial uncertainty and without male guidance or protection.Footnote ¹⁴ As the letters Willis explores in her essay demonstrate, this process of providing emotional support from a distance was even more complex for African American troops. Some were writing to families still held in bondage, or to families on the move. The widespread illiteracy among formerly enslaved troops, legally enforced in many slave states (especially after the Nat Turner revolt) to curtail organized resistance, no doubt prevented others from giving or receiving succour through the written word.Footnote ¹⁵

Despite these difficulties, the physical object of the letter (as much as the words it contained) was a crucial symbol of support, and a (civilizing) reminder of the world outside the confines of the army camp, for soldiers of all racial and sectional identities. So too, the material importance of photographs as objects during the Civil War cannot be overstated; as Willis notes, the booming market for portrait photography during the conflict reflected the need to maintain a psychic link between the home and battle fronts, and to create indelible markers of a man's identity and individuality that would ensure that his memory was preserved in the event of his death.Footnote ¹⁶ This was perhaps doubly significant for formerly enslaved soldiers whose individuality and humanity had been denied and suppressed by their enslavement, and who, as noted above, were less likely than their white colleagues to be able to correspond with absent loved ones through the written word.

Photographs could act as a proxy for the absent figure. An image of a father, propped on the family mantelpiece, for instance, could be a reminder to naughty children of the standards of behaviour expected from them. Material objects have a sensory dimension, too: holding and caressing a photograph of an absent lover, and touching a piece of card or tin which had itself been touched by the sender, helped to bridge the physical distance between partners.Footnote ¹⁷ Photographs could even act as protective talismans, steeling men's courage before the fight, and reminding them of the cause and the life for which they were fighting. The ornate cases in which many men chose to house precious photographs were testament to the emotional value attached to them.

When thinking about the photographs as material artefacts, it is important, too, to consider the context and environment in which these photographs were produced. More work remains to be done to recover the experience of having one's photograph taken, and how this experience impacted on a black soldier's understanding of his military service. Many of these photographs would have been taken in urban encampments, before men departed for the front; before, that is, they had experienced the trauma and confusion of battle, or the boring, unsanitary rhythms of camp life. Photographers were always in high demand; did the subjects of these photographs queue long to have their likeness made? Were they hustled in and out with just a few seconds to think about their pose, their props, their facial expression? Was this the first time they had been photographed? Did they wait in line alone, or with comrades? Did they have a fixed idea of to whom they anticipated sending the developed photograph? How did it feel to sit perfectly still during the shot's long exposure? As they sat or stood, did the soldiers immortalized here consider the political meaning and consequences of having their photograph taken?

As well as these questions, the photographs discussed by Willis demonstrate a tension between the subject's self-representation and the photographer's own aesthetic, political and commercial agendas.Footnote ¹⁸ While photographic business practises (which meant that photographs were often labelled with the studio owner's name, rather than the individual photographer's) and overall poor documentation make it difficult to draw concrete conclusions, it is likely that many photographs of black soldiers were taken by white photographers, and thus mediated through a white lens. Given this, what is most striking about the images is not the differences between photographs of black soldiers and white soldiers, but the similarities. Footnote ¹⁹ In composition, pose and expression, photographs of black and white soldiers more often than not fit firmly within a wartime portrait photographic tradition. This tradition created, if accidentally, a makeshift equality among photographed soldiers, regardless of race or ethnicity. By occupying the same visual tropes as white soldiers, African American troops rejected the dehumanizing and degrading visual representations of the antebellum period – those which had exaggerated black physiognomy to grotesque proportions in order to equate African Americans with apes and other beasts. Photographs of individual black soldiers wordlessly signalled to the viewer that, in a world where black men laid down their lives for the nation, and where the “truthful” lens of the camera could expose and invalidate existing, distorted perceptions of blackness, the right of African Americans to be treated as humans, as equals, and as citizens could no longer so easily be denied.